Sean Hollister at The Verge reported on Intel's recent quarterly report.Their chosen headline focuses on the significant losses incurred from the Mobile and Communications Group, the division responsible for tablet SoCs and 3G/4G modems. Its revenue dropped 52%, since last quarter, and its losses increased about 6%. Intel is still making plenty of money, with $12.291 billion USD in profits for 2013, but that is in spite of Mobile and Communications losing $3.148 billion over the same time.

Intel did have some wins, however. The Internet of Things Group is quite profitable, with $123 million USD of income from $482 million of revenue.They also had a better March quarter than the prior year, up a few hundred million in both revenue and profits. Also, Mobile and Communications should have a positive impact on the rest of the company. The Silvermont architecture, for instance, will eventually form the basis for 2015's Xeon Phi processors and co-processors.

It is concerning that Internet of Things has over twice the sales of Mobile but I hesitate to make any judgments. From my position, it is very difficult to see whether or not this trend follows Intel's projections. We simply do not know whether the division, time and time again, fails to meet expectations or whether Intel is just intentionally being very aggressive to position itself better in the future. I would shrug off the latter but, obviously, the former would be a serious concern.

The best thing for us to do is to keep an eye on their upcoming roadmaps and compare them to early projections.

Intel has introduced a new convertible tablet aimed at the education market (specifically as a tool for students to use in their studies) conveniently dubbed the Intel Education 2-In-1. This latest product is a portable dockable tablet powered by an Intel Atom processor and running Windows 8.1 along with Intel Education software.

The new Education 2-In-1 tablet is the successor to Intel's previous Education Tablets series which included two Atom powered devices running the Android OS. The latest convertible tablet features a 10.1 touchscreen and capacitive stylus that weighs 683 grams (1.51 pounds). The tablet can also be connected to a keyboard dock for a total weight of 1.173 kilograms (2.58 pounds). It is a ruggedized design that can withstand up to 70cm drops (50cm when docked) and is both water and dust resistant per IP51 specifications.

The upcoming PC features a 10.1” 5-point multi-touch display with a resolution of 1366x768, a 1.26 MP webcam, and a 5.0 MP rear camera. The keyboard dock offers up a full qwerty keyboard, trackpad, additional IO ports, and a second battery. Intel rates its Atom-powered tablet at 8 hours of battery life for the tablet itself and 11 hours (total) when docked with the keyboard.

External IO includes:

1 x USB 3.0

1 x Micro SD card slot

1 x Audio out/Mic in combo jack

1 x Micro HDMI

2 x integrated speakers

1 x Integrated microphone

The tablet further offers up a wide array of sensors for obtaining environmental data including an accelerometer, ambient light sensor, electronic compass, gyroscope, and optional GPS. Students can also get temperature readings via a probe and pair the rear camera with a magnification lens. The sensor and image data can be fed into the educational software bundled with the tablet for use in school labs.

Internally, the convertible tablet is powered by a quad core Intel Atom Z3740D processor clocked at 1.8 GHz, 2GB of DDR3L 1333 MHz memory, and either 32 GB or 64 GB of internal eMMC storage. Networking is handled by an 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 radio along with optional NFC, 3G, and LTE cellular radios. The tablet hosts a 7600mAH (28 Wh) battery while the keyboard dock offers up an additional 15 Wh battery.

On the software side of things, the tablet runs the 32-bit version of Windows 8.1 which is bundled with Intel's educational software suite and McAfee AntiVirus Plus. The educational software includes a digital textbook library from Kno Products.

The ruggedized design leaves something (read: aesthetics) to be desired, but the somewhat-bulky convertible is built to handle the inevitable, well, handling by students during their daily class schedules. Further, the Bay Trail SoC should run Windows 8.1 well enough to run the basic applications needed for coursework.

As more schools are looking into supporting digital learning material and incorporating devices such as laptops, tablets, and e-readers, Intel does not want to be left out of the game. The Education 2-In-1 is not likely to be a direct-to-consumer product but more of a business-to-educational institution offering much like Google's Chromebook subscription program and is intended to show off the hardware and software 'experience' that the company's Bay Trail Atom SoC platform is capable of enabling.

Intel is releasing a refreshed lineup of processors based on its latest generation “Haswell” micro-architecture. The new lineup is comprised of 27 new desktop processors and 17 new mobile CPUs (44 in total). The new chips will displace the existing Haswell processors at their existing price points with small clockspeed increases.

On the desktop side of things, the Haswell Refresh lineup includes four new Core i7, ten Core i5, five Core i3, five Pentium, and three Celeron processors. The new chips come in both standard and (multiple) lower-TDP variants. At the top end, Intel is introducing a new non-K part called the Intel Core i7 4790 which is a quad core (eight thread) processor clocked at 3.6 GHz with 8MB of L3 cache. The new CPU also comes in 65W i7-4790S (3.2 GHz) and 45W i7-4790T (2.7 GHz). The new desktop parts range in tray price from $45 to $303.

Additionally, Intel is updating its mobile lineup by introducing 17 new chips. The refreshed lineup includes six Core i7s, four Core i5s, five Core i3s, one Pentium, and one Celeron CPU. The mobile parts range in tray price from $75 to $434. Like the desktop range, the mobile chips come in multiple low power TDP SKUs. Five of the new chips are quad cores while the rest are dual cores.

Intel’s new refreshed Haswell processors are reportedly coming early next month as part of the "Haswell Refresh Platform." The chips will fully support motherboards based on Intel’s upcoming LGA 1150 9-series chipsets, and the various motherboard manufactures appear to be hard at work getting their lineups ready. As a result, enthusiasts can expect to see the new chips and motherboards (using the H97 and Z97 chipsets) on store shelves soon.

If you have not already bought into Haswell, the refreshed lineup is worth waiting for. if you are already running a Haswell-based system, upgrading to a refreshed Haswell CPU and H97 or Z97 motherboard makes much less sense. Instead, you should ride it out until Sky Lake or at least Broadwell (upgrade itch permitting, of course).

If you have been anxiously awaiting the release of the new Core i7-4790 and 9-series of chipsets from Intel, you are going to be waiting a bit longer. DigiTimes is reporting that the negative feedback from vendors has convinced them to delay releasing the new chip and chipset for another month. This is likely due to the number of current generation Haswell chips, motherboards and systems stuck in the channel thanks that vendors are hoping will sell thanks to the EoL of WinXP. The numbers from Gartner support their theory, the long downwards trend of PC sales has leveled off in the last quarter. We can only hope that there will be discounts and sales towards the end of the month to help clean out the channel for the release of the new generation of Haswell processors.

"Intel is set to launch its new Haswell Refresh processors and 9-series chipsets for desktops in early May, postponing the CPU giant's original schedule from April, according to sources from motherboard players."

When Adobe started to GPU-accelerate their applications beyond OpenGL, it started with NVIDIA and its CUDA platform. After some period of time, they started to integrate OpenCL support and bring AMD into the fold. At first, it was limited to a couple of Apple laptops but has since expanded to include several GPUs on both OSX and Windows. Since then, Adobe switched to a subscription-based release system and has published updates on a more rapid schedule. The next update of Adobe Premiere Pro CC will bring OpenCL to Intel Iris Pro iGPUs.

Of course, they specifically mentioned Adobe Premiere Pro CC which suggests that Photoshop CC users might be coming later. The press release does suggest that the update will affect both Mac and Windows versions of Adobe Premiere Pro CC, however, so at least platforms will not be divided. Well, that is, if you find a Windows machine with Iris Pro graphics. They do exist...

Athlon and Pentium Live On

Over the past year or so, we have taken a look at a few budgetgaming builds here at PC Perspective. One of our objectives with these build guides was to show people that PC gaming can be cost competitive with console gaming, and at a much higher quality.

However, we haven't stopped pursuing our goal of the perfect inexpensive gaming PC, which is still capable of maxing out image quality settings on today's top games at 1080p.

Today we take a look at two new systems, featuring some parts which have been suggested to us after our previous articles.

(Editor's note: If you don't already have a copy of Windows, and don't plan on using Linux or SteamOS, you'll need an OEM copy of Windows 8.1 - currently selling for $98.)

These are low prices for a gaming computer, and feature some parts which many of you might not know a lot about. Let's take a deeper look at the two different platforms which we built upon.

The Platforms

First up is the AMD Athlon X4 760K. While you may not have known the Athlon brand was still being used on current parts, they represent an interesting part of the market. On the FM2 socket, the 760K is essentially a high end Richland APU, with the graphics portion of the chip disabled.

What this means is that if you are going to pair your processor with a discrete GPU anyway, you can skip paying extra for the integrated GPU.

As for the motherboard, we went for an ultra inexpensive A55 option from Gigabyte, the GA-F2A55M-HD2. This board features the A55 chipset which launched with the Llano APUs in 2011. Because of this older chipset, the board does not feature USB 3.0 or SATA 6G capability, but since we are only concerned about gaming performance here, it makes a great bare bones option.

Intel's Atom has finally shaken the bad name that its progenitors have born as Bay Trail proves to be a great implementation of an SoC. At IDF we received a tantalizing glimpse at the next generation of SoC from Intel, the 14nm Braswell chip though little was said of their ultra low powered Cherry Trail SoC for tablets. Braswell is more than just a process shrink, Intel is working to increase their support of Chromebooks and Android by creating a 64-bit Android kernel that supports Android 4.4. This seems to have paid off as Kirk Skaugen mentioned to The Inquirer that Intel chips will be present in 20 soon to be released models, up from 4 currently.

"INTEL HAS REVEALED PLANS to launch Braswell, a more powerful successor to the Bay Trail system on a chip (SoC) line used in low-cost devices like Chromebooks and budget PCs."

DX12 and its Mantle-like qualities garnered the most interest from gamers at GDC but an odd trio of companies were also pushing a different API. OpenGL has been around for over 20 years and has waged a long war against Direct3D, a war which may be intensifying again. Representatives from Intel, AMD and NVIDIA all took to the stage to praise the new OpenGL standard, suggesting that with a tweaked implementation of OpenGL developers could expect to see performance increases between 7 to 15 times. The Inquirer has embedded an hour long video in their story, check it out to learn more.

"CHIP DESIGNERS AMD, Intel and Nvidia teamed up to tout the advantages of the OpenGL multi-platform application programming interface (API) at this year's Game Developers Conference (GDC)."

So, for all the discussion about DirectX 12, the three main desktop GPU vendors, NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel, want to tell OpenGL developers how to tune their applications. Using OpenGL 4.2 and a few cross-vendor extensions, because OpenGL is all about its extensions, a handful of known tricks can reduce driver overhead up to ten-fold and increase performance up to fifteen-fold. The talk is very graphics developer-centric, but it basically describes a series of tricks known to accomplish feats similar to what Mantle and DirectX 12 suggest.

The 130-slide presentation is broken into a few sections, each GPU vendor getting a decent chunk of time. On occasion, they would mention which implementation fairs better with one function call. The main point that they wanted to drive home (since they clearly repeated the slide three times with three different fonts) is that none of this requires a new API. Everything exists and can be implemented right now. The real trick is to know how to not poke the graphics library in the wrong way.

The page also hosts a keynote from the recent Steam Dev Days.

That said, an advantage that I expect from DirectX 12 and Mantle is reduced driver complexity. Since the processors have settled into standards, I expect that drivers will not need to do as much unless the library demands it for legacy reasons. I am not sure how extending OpenGL will affect that benefit, as opposed to just isolating the legacy and building on a solid foundation, but I wonder if these extensions could be just as easy to maintain and optimize. Maybe it is.

The room is much smaller than it should be. Line was way too long for a room like this.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:00 Ryan Shrout

10:01

Josh Walrath:

that is a super small room for such an event. Especially considering the online demand for details!

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:01 Josh Walrath

10:02

Ryan Shrout

Qualcomm's Eric Demers, AMD's Raja Koduri, NVIDIA's Tony Tamasi.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:02

10:03

Ryan Shrout:

And we are starting!

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:03 Ryan Shrout

10:03

Josh Walrath:

Have those boys gotten their knives out yet. Are the press circling them and snapping their fingers?

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:03 Josh Walrath

10:03

Ryan Shrout:

Going over a history of DX.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:03 Ryan Shrout

10:03

Ryan Shrout

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:03

10:04

Ryan Shrout:

Talking about the development process.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:04 Ryan Shrout

10:04

Ryan Shrout:

All partner base.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:04 Ryan Shrout

10:04

Ryan Shrout

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:04

10:05

[Comment From GuestGuest: ]

why cant I comment ?

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:05 Guest

10:05

Ryan Shrout:

GPU performance is "embarrassing parallel" statement here.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:05 Ryan Shrout

10:05

Scott Michaud:

You can, we just need to publish them. And there's *a lot* of comments.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:05 Scott Michaud

10:05

Ryan Shrout

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:05

10:05

Josh Walrath:

We see everything, Peter.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:05 Josh Walrath

10:05

Ryan Shrout:

CPU performance has not improved at the same rate. This difference rate of increase is a big challenge for DX.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:05 Ryan Shrout

10:06

Ryan Shrout:

Third point has been a challenge, until now.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:06 Ryan Shrout

10:07

Ryan Shrout:

What do developers want? List similar to what AMD presented with Mantle.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:07 Ryan Shrout

10:07

Ryan Shrout:

DX12 "is no dot release"

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:07 Ryan Shrout

10:08

Ryan Shrout

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:08

10:08

Ryan Shrout:

It faster, more direct. ha ha.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:08 Ryan Shrout

10:08

Ryan Shrout

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:08

10:08

Ryan Shrout:

Xbox One games will see improved performance. Coming to all MS platforms. PC, mobile too.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:08 Ryan Shrout

10:08

Josh Walrath:

Oh look, mobile!

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:08 Josh Walrath

10:09

Ryan Shrout

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:09

10:09

Ryan Shrout:

New tools are a requirement.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:09 Ryan Shrout

10:09

Josh Walrath:

We finally have a MS answer to OpenGL ES.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:09 Josh Walrath

10:09

Scott Michaud:

Hmm, none of the four pictures in the bottom is a desktop or Laptop.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:09 Scott Michaud

10:09

Ryan Shrout:

D3D 12 is the first version to go much lower level.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:09 Ryan Shrout

10:09

[Comment From GuestGuest: ]

The last one is a desktop...

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:09 Guest

10:10

Scott Michaud:

Huh, thought it was TV. My mistake.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:10 Scott Michaud

10:10

Ryan Shrout

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:10

10:10

Ryan Shrout:

Yeah, desktop PC is definitely on the list here guys.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:10 Ryan Shrout

10:11

Ryan Shrout:

Going to show us some prototypes.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:11 Ryan Shrout

10:11

Ryan Shrout:

Ported latest 3DMark.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:11 Ryan Shrout

10:12

Ryan Shrout:

In DX11, one core is doing most of the work.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:12 Ryan Shrout

10:12

Ryan Shrout:

on d3d12, overall CPU utilization is down 50%

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:12 Ryan Shrout

10:13

Ryan Shrout:

Also, the workload is more spread out.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:13 Ryan Shrout

10:13

Ryan Shrout

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:13

10:13

Ryan Shrout:

Interesting data for you all!!

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:13 Ryan Shrout

10:13

Ryan Shrout

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:13

10:14

Ryan Shrout:

Grouping entire pipeline state into state objects. These can be mapped very efficiently to GPU hardware.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:14 Ryan Shrout

10:14

Ryan Shrout

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:14

10:15

Ryan Shrout:

"Solved" multi-threaded scalability.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:15 Ryan Shrout

10:15

Scott Michaud:

Hmm, from ~8ms to ~4. That's an extra 4ms for the GPU to work. 20 GFLOPs for a GeForce Titan.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:15 Scott Michaud

10:15

[Comment From JayJay: ]

Multicore Scalability.... Seems like a big deal when you have 6-8 cores!

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:15 Jay

10:16

Josh Walrath:

It is a big deal for the CPU guys.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:16 Josh Walrath

10:16

Ryan Shrout:

D3D12 allows apps to control graphics memory better.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:16 Ryan Shrout

10:16

Ryan Shrout

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:16

10:17

Ryan Shrout:

API is now much lower level. Application tracks pipeline status, not the API.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:17 Ryan Shrout

10:17

[Comment From JimJim: ]

20 GFlops from a Titan? Stock Titan gets around 5 ATM.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:17 Jim

10:17

Ryan Shrout

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:17

10:18

Ryan Shrout:

Less API and driver tracking universally. More more predictability.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:18 Ryan Shrout

10:18

Ryan Shrout:

This is targeted at the smartest developers, but gives you unprecedented performance.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:18 Ryan Shrout

10:18

Ryan Shrout:

Also planning to advance state of rendering features. Feature level 12.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:18 Ryan Shrout

10:19

Scott Michaud:

Titan gets around ~5 Teraflops, actually... if it is fully utilized. I'm saying that an extra 4ms is an extra 20 GFlops per frame.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:19 Scott Michaud

10:19

Ryan Shrout

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:19

10:19

Josh Walrath:

Titan is around 5 TFlops total, that 20 GFLOPS is potential performance in the time gained by optimizations.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:19 Josh Walrath

10:19

Ryan Shrout:

Better collision and culling

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:19 Ryan Shrout

10:19

Ryan Shrout:

Constantly working with GPU vendors to find new ways to render.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:19 Ryan Shrout

10:20

Ryan Shrout:

Forza 5 on stage now. Strictly console developer.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:20 Ryan Shrout

10:20

[Comment From Lewap PawelLewap Pawel: ]

So 20GFLOPS per frame is 20x60 = 1200GFLOPS/sec? 20% improvement?

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:20 Lewap Pawel

10:21

Ryan Shrout

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:21

10:21

Scott Michaud:

Not quite, because we don't know how many FPS we had originally.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:21 Scott Michaud

10:21

Ryan Shrout:

Talking about porting the game to D3D12

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:21 Ryan Shrout

10:22

Ryan Shrout:

4 man-months effort to port core rendering engine.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:22 Ryan Shrout

10:22

Ryan Shrout:

Demo time!

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:22 Ryan Shrout

10:22

Ryan Shrout

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:22

10:22

Ryan Shrout:

Rendering at static 60 FPS.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:22 Ryan Shrout

10:23

Ryan Shrout

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:23

10:23

Ryan Shrout:

Bundles allows for instancing but with variance.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:23 Ryan Shrout

10:24

Ryan Shrout:

Resource lifetime, track memory directly. No longer have D3D tracking that lifetime, much cheaper on resources.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:24 Ryan Shrout

10:24

Ryan Shrout:

"It's all up to us, and that's how we like it."

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:24 Ryan Shrout

10:24

Ryan Shrout:

Does anyone else here worry that DX12 might leave out some smaller devs that can't go so low level?

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:24 Ryan Shrout

10:25

Josh Walrath:

I would say that depends on the quality of tools that MS provides, as well as IHV support.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:25 Josh Walrath

10:25

Scott Michaud:

Not really, for me. The reason why they can go so much lower these days is because what is lower is more consistent.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:25 Scott Michaud

10:26

Ryan Shrout:

And now back to info. Will you have to buy new hardware? I would say no since they just showed Xbox One... lol

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:26 Ryan Shrout

10:26

[Comment From killeakkilleak: ]

Small devs will use an Engine, not make their own.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:26 killeak

10:26

Ryan Shrout

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:26

10:26

Ryan Shrout:

On stage now is Raja Koduri from AMD.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:26 Ryan Shrout

10:27

Scott Michaud:

Not true at all, actually. Just look at Frictional (Amnesia). They made their own engine tailored for what their game needed.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:27 Scott Michaud

10:27

Ryan Shrout:

AMD has been working very closely with DX12. Heh.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:27 Ryan Shrout

10:27

Josh Walrath:

Shocking!

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:27 Josh Walrath

10:28

Ryan Shrout

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:28

10:28

Josh Walrath:

Strike a pose!

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:28 Josh Walrath

10:28

Ryan Shrout:

There is tension: AMD is trying to push hw forward, MS is trying to push their platform forward.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:28 Ryan Shrout

10:28

Ryan Shrout:

Very honest assessment of the current setup between AMD, NVIDIA, MS.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:28 Ryan Shrout

10:28

[Comment From GuestGuest: ]

Scott, with the recent changes with CryEngine, UE4 going subscription based more Indies might just go that route.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:28 Guest

10:28

Ryan Shrout:

DX12 is an area where they had the least tension in Raja's history in this field.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:28 Ryan Shrout

10:29

Scott Michaud:

Definitely. But that is not the same thing as saying that indies will not make their own engine.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:29 Scott Michaud

10:29

Ryan Shrout

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:29

10:29

Ryan Shrout:

Key is that current users get benefit with this API on day 1.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:29 Ryan Shrout

10:29

Ryan Shrout:

"Like getting 4 generations of hardware ahead."

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:29 Ryan Shrout

10:29

Ryan Shrout

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:29

10:31

Josh Walrath:

That answers a few of the burning questions!

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:31 Josh Walrath

10:31

Ryan Shrout:

Up now is Eric Mentzer from Intel.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:31 Ryan Shrout

10:31

[Comment From KevKev: ]

Thank you! Great news guys!

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:31 Kev

10:31

Scott Michaud:

You're welcome! : D

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:31 Scott Michaud

10:32

[Comment From JimJim: ]

OH, intel and AMD in the same room....

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:32 Jim

10:32

Scott Michaud:

Intel, AMD, NVIDIA, and Qualcomm in the same room...

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:32 Scott Michaud

10:32

Ryan Shrout:

Intel has made big change in graphics; put a lot more focus on it with tech and process tech.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:32 Ryan Shrout

10:32

Josh Walrath:

DX12 will enhance any modern graphics chip. Driver support from IHVs will be key to enable those features. This is a massive change in how DX addresses the GPU, rather than (so far) the GPU adding features.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:32 Josh Walrath

10:32

[Comment From GuestGuest: ]

so this means xbox one will get a performance boost?

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:32 Guest

10:32

Scott Michaud:

Yes

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:32 Scott Michaud

10:33

Ryan Shrout

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:33

10:33

Scott Michaud:

According to "Benefits of Direct3D 12 will extend to Xbox One", at least.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:33 Scott Michaud

10:33

Ryan Shrout:

Intel commits to having Haswell support DX12 at launch.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:33 Ryan Shrout

10:34

Ryan Shrout:

BTW - thanks to everyone for stopping by the live blog!! :)

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:34 Ryan Shrout

10:34

Josh Walrath:

Just to reiterate... PS4 utilizes OpenGL, not DX. This change will not affect PS4. Changes to OpenGL will only improve PS4 performance.

NVIDIA has been working with MS since the inception of DX12. Still don't know when that is...

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:35 Ryan Shrout

10:35

[Comment From AlexAlex: ]

PS4 doesn't use OpenGL, but custom APIs instead...

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:35 Alex

10:35

Scott Michaud:

True, it's not actually OpenGL... but is heavily heavily based on OpenGL.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:35 Scott Michaud

10:36

Ryan Shrout

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:36

10:36

Ryan Shrout:

They think it should be done with standards so there is no fragmentation.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:36 Ryan Shrout

10:36

Ryan Shrout:

lulz.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:36 Ryan Shrout

10:37

Scott Michaud:

Because everything that ends in "x" is all about no fragmentation :p

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:37 Scott Michaud

10:37

Ryan Shrout:

NVIDIA will support DX12 on Fermi, Kepler, Maxwell and forward!

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:37 Ryan Shrout

10:37

Ryan Shrout:

For developers that want to get down deep and manage all of this, DX12 is going to be really exciting.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:37 Ryan Shrout

10:38

Ryan Shrout:

NVIDIA represents about 55% of the install base.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:38 Ryan Shrout

10:38

Ryan Shrout

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:38

10:38

Ryan Shrout

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:38

10:39

Ryan Shrout:

Developers already have DX12 drivers. The Forza demo was running on NVIDIA!!!

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:39 Ryan Shrout

10:39

Ryan Shrout:

Holy crap, that wasn't on an Xbox One!!

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:39 Ryan Shrout

10:39

Scott Michaud:

Fermi and forward... aligning well with the start of their compute-based architectures... using IEEE standards (etc). Makes perfect sense. Also might help explain why pre-Fermi is deprecated after GeForce 340 drivers...

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:39 Scott Michaud

10:40

Ryan Shrout:

Support quote from Tim Sweeney.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:40 Ryan Shrout

10:41

Ryan Shrout

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:41

10:41

[Comment From CrackolaCrackola: ]

Any current NVIDIA cards DX12 ready? Titan, etc?

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:41 Crackola

10:41

Ryan Shrout:

Up now is Eric Demers from Qualcomm.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:41 Ryan Shrout

10:42

Scott Michaud:

NVIDIA said Fermi, Kepler, and Maxwell will be DX12-ready. So like... almost everything since GeForce 400... almost.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:42 Scott Michaud

10:42

Ryan Shrout

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:42

10:42

Ryan Shrout:

Qualcomm has been working with MS on mobile graphics since there WAS mobile graphics.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:42 Ryan Shrout

10:42

Ryan Shrout

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:42

10:42

Ryan Shrout:

Most windows phones are powered by Snapdragon.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:42 Ryan Shrout

10:42

Josh Walrath:

We currently don't know what changes in Direct3D will be brought to the table, all we are seeing here is how they are changing the software stack to more efficiently use modern GPUs. This does not mean that all current DX11 hardware will fully support the DX12 specification when it comes to D3D, Direct Compute, etc.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:42 Josh Walrath

10:43

Ryan Shrout:

DX12 will improve power efficiency by reducing overhead.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:43 Ryan Shrout

10:43

Ryan Shrout

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:43

10:44

Ryan Shrout:

Perf will improve on mobile device as well, of course. But gaming for longer periods on battery life is biggest draw.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:44 Ryan Shrout

10:45

Ryan Shrout:

Portability - bringing titles from the PC to Xbox to mobile platform will be much easier.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:45 Ryan Shrout

10:45

[Comment From David UyDavid Uy: ]

I think all Geforce 400 series is Fermi. so - Geforce 400 and above.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:45 David Uy

10:45

Scott Michaud:

I think the GeForce 405 is the only exception...

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:45 Scott Michaud

10:45

Ryan Shrout:

Off goes Eric.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:45 Ryan Shrout

10:45

Ryan Shrout:

MS back on stage.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:45 Ryan Shrout

10:46

Ryan Shrout:

And now a group picture lol.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:46 Ryan Shrout

10:46

Ryan Shrout

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:46

10:47

Ryan Shrout:

By the time they ship, 50% of all PC gamers will be DX12 capable.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:47 Ryan Shrout

10:47

Ryan Shrout:

Ouch, targeting Holiday 2015 games.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:47 Ryan Shrout

10:48

Ryan Shrout:

Early access coming later this year.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:48 Ryan Shrout

10:48

Ryan Shrout

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:48

10:48

Josh Walrath:

Yeah, this is a pretty big sea change.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:48 Josh Walrath

10:48

Ryan Shrout

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:48

10:49

Ryan Shrout

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:49

10:49

Scott Michaud:

50% of PC Gamers sounds like they're projecting NOT Windows 7.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:49 Scott Michaud

10:49

Ryan Shrout:

They are up for Q&A not sure how informative they will be...

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:49 Ryan Shrout

10:50

Josh Walrath:

OS support? Extension changes to D3D/Direct Compute?

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:50 Josh Walrath

10:50

Ryan Shrout:

Windows 7 support? Won't be announcing anything today but they understand the request.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:50 Ryan Shrout

10:51

Ryan Shrout:

Q: What about support for multi-GPU? They will have a way to target specific GPUs in a system.

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:51 Ryan Shrout

10:51

Ryan Shrout:

This session is wrapping up for now!

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:51 Ryan Shrout

10:51

Ryan Shrout:

Looks like we are light on details but we'll be catching more sessions today so check back on http://www.pcper.com/

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:51 Ryan Shrout

10:52

Scott Michaud:

"a way to target specific GPUs in a system" this sounds like developers can program their own Crossfire/SLi methods, like OpenCL and Mantle.

Thanks everyone for joining us! We MIGHT live blog the other sessions today, so you can sign up for our mailing list to find out when we go live. http://www.pcper.com/subscribe

Thursday March 20, 2014 10:52 Ryan Shrout

10:57

Scott Michaud:

Apparently NVIDIA's blog says DX12 discussion begun more than four years ago "with discussions about reducing resource overhead". They worked for a year to deliver "a working design and implementation of DX12 at GDC".